Qualitative studies can be fascinating and insightful but they may leave readers with a quantitative disposition worrying about the generality of their findings. Quantitative studies, on the other hand, whilst providing data from larger and more representative samples, seem more mechanical and arid to qualitative researchers.
— J. Brannenr
In this unit you will:
·learn about the crucial approaches to academic writing from data gathering, source criticism, application to validity and reliability
·learn about the attributes of a well-designed questionnaire
·learn about the attributes of structured interview
·know how to conduct a survey adopting a framework of questionnaires
Pre-class work
1. Work with your partner and discuss the following topics.
(1) Do you think it is a process-based writing while you are composing an academic report?
(2) What steps do you usually follow in your academic writing experience?
(3) To what extent should a conclusion be recognized as scientific?
2. Take the following quiz to see how much you know about academic writing.
(1) ______ will help keep your research focused and on track.
A. Research questions B. Background research
C. Constructing a hypothesis
(2) _______ is an account that gives detailed information about a person, group or thing and their development over a period of time.
A. Project B. Case study
C. Experimental research
(3) _______ use observations, interviews, historical and narrative documentation, and similar subjective data as a basis for discovering and confirming relationships among variables.
A. Qualitative researchers B. Quantitative researchers
C. Peer researchers
(4) The data-collection method of the following evidence is _____?
PZ: Could you describe the early stages of the project? How did you begin to make sense of the assignment?
MH: I did some searches and found a lot of materials about Arvanites but none by them. It appears that their language is almost dead, so there aren’t many written texts by them. I found some texts on the web that said they were by Arvanites, but they were in Greek, so I could not go with them. I decided to start writing the draft just to make a better sense of the assignment and to go by what I had. I thought things would become clearer as I went. I ended up writing five drafts.